Woodenly, I went up the steps, opened the screen door, and stepped into the kitchen. Laurin was standing rigidly behind Ray, and I thought: She's grown older, the same as I have. Those large eyes of hers were no longer the eyes of a girl, but of a woman who had known worry and trouble and—at last I placed it—fear. She had changed in her own way almost as much as I had changed. Only Ray Novak seemed the same.
Ray said, “We don't want any trouble, Tall. Not here. Maybe it's best that you came back this way and we can get things settled once and for all.”
Laurin said nothing. She didn't move. She looked at me as if she had never seen me before, and in my mind I heard Joe Bannerman saying: There's nothing for you here in John's City. Nothing at all. But I fought back the sickness inside me. Laurin had loved me once, that was all that mattered. She still loved me. Nothing could change that.
Ray Novak moved his head toward the parlor. “Do you want to come in here, Tall? We've got a lot to say and not much time to say it in. My pa is coming in from town in a few minutes to pick me up in the buckboard. We'll have to get everything settled before then.”
I said, “I can settle with you later. This is just between me and Laurin.”
I looked at her and still she didn't move. I couldn't tell what she was thinking. At last she said, “It's Ray's affair as much as ours, Tall. You see, we're going to be married.”
I guess a part of me must have died then. Joe Bannerman had said it and I hadn't believed it. Now it was Laurin herself, telling me as soberly as she knew how that it was all over between us, and I knew that this time it was the truth. I wasn't sure what I felt, or what I wanted to do about it. I suppose I wanted to go to her, to take hold of her with my hands and shake some sense into her. Or hold her close and make her see that it wasn't over with us, that it never would be. But her eyes stopped me. Perhaps she had expected something like that, and I saw that look of fear come out and look at me. She started backing away. She was afraid of me.
Ray Novak said, “I wanted you to know about me and Laurin before I went out looking for you. I didn't want you to think that I was going around behind your back....”
I shoved him aside with the flat of my hand and took Laurin's arm before she could back away. She tried to twist out of my grasp, but I held on and jerked her toward me. Anger like I've never known before was swelling my throat. I said, “Tell him to get out of here! If he doesn't, so help me God, I'll kill him where he stands!”
Ray Novak started to step forward. Instinctively, his hand started to move toward his gun, and I was praying that he would follow through with the motion. But Laurin said:
“Ray!”
And he stopped. Then something strange happened to Laurin. A moment before her eyes were bright and shiny with fear, but now they showed nothing.
She said, “Ray, do as he says.”
Ray Novak's face darkened. “I'm not leaving you alone with him. He's crazy. There's something wrong and mixed up and rotten in that head of his.”
“Ray, please!”
He hesitated for another moment. Then he relaxed. “All right, Laurin. Whatever you say. But I'll be outside if...”
He left the rest unsaid. He turned and went out the back door, taking up a position a few paces away from the back steps.
I heard myself laugh abruptly. “So that's the man you're going to marry! A man with a yellow streak up his back that shows all the way through his shirt!”
But I stopped. That wasn't what I wanted to say at all. Anyway, I knew that Ray Novak wasn't yellow. He might be a lot of things, but a coward wasn't one of them.
Laurin said, “Tall, please. You're hurting me.”
I turned loose her arm. My thoughts were all mixed up in my mind and I couldn't get the words arranged to tell her what I wanted to say. I found myself standing there dumbly, rubbing my face with my hands and wondering how I was going to explain it to her. If I could only explain it in a way she could understand, then everything would be all right again. But she didn't give me a chance to get my thoughts arranged.
She said flatly, “Why don't you go away, Tall? Go far away so that we'll never see you or hear from you again. Ray will give you that chance, because he knows what you meant to me once. He has been sworn in as a special deputy to get you. He's working for the government, Tall, a United States marshal—but he'll give you a chance if you'll only take it.”
I said, “I don't need any favors from Ray Novak!” But that wasn't what I wanted to say, either. “Laurin, Laurin, what's wrong? What have they said... what have they done to turn you against me like this?”
She shook her head, a bewildered look in her eyes. “You actually believe that your trouble is caused by other people, don't you?”
Think? I
I said quickly, “Laurin, listen to me. This isn't the end of us. It's only the beginning. It won't be the same as we planned, but we can make it good. We can be together.” I took her arm, gently this time, and she didn't try to pull away. “They'll never catch me,” I said. “The army, Ray Novak, nobody else. We'll go away. Pappy knows a place in New Mexico. We can go there. We'll be together, that's the only thing that counts. You don't mean it about marrying Ray Novak, it's just because you've heard wrong things about me. You love me, not him.”
The words came rushing out in senseless confusion, and they stopped as abruptly as they had begun. The look of bewilderment went out of Laurin's eyes, and amazement took its place.
“Love you?” she said strangely. “I don't even know you. I don't suppose I ever knew you. Not really, the way you get to know people and understand them, and be a part of them. You're...” She shook her head helplessly. “You're nobody I ever saw before. You're some wild animal driven crazy—by the smell of blood.”
